By: sullchron
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Henry II arrives to keep Strongbow in check; Strongbow submits and is granted Kingdom of Leinster. Dermot McCarthy, King of Desmond, submits to Henry; southern kings and bishops follow suit
By: Williams
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Mac Carthaigh's Book, DA 905 03 compiled for Florence McCarthy by Diarmaid O Suilleabhin in 1633 1123, 1196, 1201, 1214 Slaughters, hosiges and hostage taking of the 12th century. 1123 O'Suilleabhain [and others]deposed Tadhg son of Muireadach MacCarthaigh, and Cormac son of MacCarthaigh, his own brother, took the kingship from them in his presence. 1209 A hosting by Finghin [MacCartaaigh]... and there was a fleet to meet him at ViRathach, and they killed a great number of people and cattle. This Finghuin was killed by the Vi Shuilleabhain [in a dispute] concerning division of booty. Gearr Ville's son struck him with an axe. 1214 Diarmaid [MacCarthaigh] treacherously killed the whole family of Domhnail Mor O Suilleabhain .. on the advice of many, if not the greater part, of Desmond.
By: McCarthy
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The English Jesuit William Campion wrote of the Irish in 1577: The people are thus inclined: religious, frank, amorous, ireful, sufferable, of pains infinite, very glorious, many sorcerers, excellent horsemen, delighted with wars, great almsgivers, passing in hospitality." They are "lightly abused to believe and avouch idle miracles and revelations vain and childish. Greedy of praise they be, and fearful of dishonour."
"they are sharp-witted, lovers of learning, capable of any study whereunto they bend themselves, constant in travail, adventurous, intractable, kindhearted, secret in displeasure..."
The clever phrase, whether of praise or criticism, was much esteemed among them.
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Florence Maccarthy story p811, (mcCarthy)
By: o'murcada
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Spanish land at Kinsale. Mountjoy besieges Spanish; O'Neill and Red Hugh O'Donnell march length of Ireland and besiege Mountjoy. O'Neill's forces botch attack; Mountjoy victorious. O'Donnell flees to Spain
By: cusak
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The greatest Sullivan story of them all! In the winter of 1602, Donal Cam O'Sullivan Beare, was holed up in the mountains of West Cork after the defeat of the Gaelic chieftains at Kinsale, and the destruction of his fortress by the English (now that's another story). Surrounded by his enemies, running out of food, and with the promised help from Spain sorely lacking, O'Sullivan's plight seemed hopeless...his nearest allies were 300 miles to the north and the Queen had set a bounty on his head. Surrender was the only option.
But not for Donal Cam. Marshalling his people, he set off with 1,000 followers across the mountains of Cork, a desparate journey through the heart of a bitter winter. Although harrassed almost constantly by English forces, or turncoat Gaelic chieftains, the group resolutely made their way northwards as far as the river Shannon. At this point, their horses had to be slaughtered to provide the skins for currachs (corracles) to bear the group to safety. O'Sullivan continued on his march from the Shannon to finally find refuge with O'Rourke of Breifne. Of his thousand followers, hardly more than fifty had survived. But they had survived, and, in this small way, claimed a victory for a dying way of life, a civilisation soon to disappear for ever. O'Sullivan marched. O'Sullivans died. But through the tragedy and trouble, the O'Sullivan triumphed.
L/amh foistenach ab/u!
By: Tomas O'Sullivan (what else!)
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in%"tdjos@student.ucc.ie"
Last night the warrant was brought to Newgate for executing tomorrow Joseph Sullivan, alias Silver, for inlisting men... for the Pretender.
--Dublin newspaper
Executions of Irishmen for recruiting on behalf of the Stuart Pretender James ("Bonnie Prince Charlie"), recognized this year as King of Great Britain and Ireland by Louis XIV, are a principal fare of the Irish press in the early decades of the eighteenth century. In this case Sullivan, a native of Munster and a member of the 1st Regiment of Footguards, London, has been convicted of treason by a hostile English jury and is accordingly "hang'd, drawn, and quarter'd," his head "fix'd to a pole, on Temple Bar."
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Ensign Alferes Juan Julian O'Sulivan of the Edinburgh Dragoons, an Irish regiment in the Spanish Army, is reviewed by his commanding officer. Reportedly Ensign O'Sulivan "has great ability but his marriage to a lady of quality has involved him in a number of lawsuits, causing his frequent absense from duty." Recommendation: he is to be brought to heel - or discharged.
Others reviewed include Edwardo Stapleton, who is given to drunkenness, and Cornelio Conway, who is bright in Mathematics, and Captain Domingo Hickey who has "a deceitful nature, shies away from work, and is artful, persuasive, and poisonous."
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John William O'Sullivan of Kerry, (a "fat, well-fed seminarian," according to his English detractors) has now left Ireland for several years. Like many of his expatriate countrymen with a taste for adventure he has served in the French Army, participating in the French campaigns in Italy and Germany. Now in his late thirties he has become a tutor to a French Count, Maillebois. O'Sullivan is finding himself "better suited for the sword than the gown" and rejoins the French army in its campaign to subdue rebel action in Corsica. There he wins a reputation as an adept at guerilla warfare and prudent warden of his dissipated commander, Maillebois (1682-1762).
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From the July 25, 1743 Boston Evening Post, following an advertisement for the return of "an escaped negro fellow, lusty, stout, and comely," the following: My dear and loving Husband,
--Your abrupt Departure from me, and forsaking of me your Wife and tender Babes, which I humble acknowledge and confess I was greatly if not wholly on the Occasion of, by my too rash and unadvised Speech and Behaviour towards you; for which I now in this publick Manner humbly ask your Forgiveness, and here-by promise upon your Return, to amend and reform, and by ny future loving and obedient Carriage towards you, endeavour to make an Atonement for my past evil Deeds, and manifest to you and the whole World that I am become a new Woman, and will prove to you a loving dutiful and tender wife.
If you do not regard what I have above written, I pray you to hearken to what you Pupil,
Joshua Gilpatrick hath below sent you as also to the Lamentations and Cries of your poor
Children, especially the eldest, who (tho' but seven Years old) all rational People really
conclude, that unless you speedily return will end in his Death, and the moans of your other
Children are enough to affect any humane heart....And why, my dear Husband, should a few angry
and unkind Words, from an angry and fretful Wife (for which I am now paying full dear, having
neither eat, drank nor slept in quiet, and am already reduced almost to a skeleton, that
unless you favour me with your Company, will bereave me of my Life) make you thus to forsake
me and your Children? How can you thus for so slender a Cause as a few rash words from a
simple and weak Woman, chuse you to part from your tender Babes, who are your own Flesh and
Blood? Pray meditate on what I now send, and reprieve you poor Wife and eldest Son (who take
your Departure so heavily) from a lingering tho' certain Death, by your coming home to them
again as speedily as you can, where you shall be kindly received, and in the most submissive
Manner by your Wife, who is ready at your Desire, to lay her self at your Feet for her past
Miscarriage and am with my and your Children's kind love to you, your loving Wife, Margery
Sullivan
Summersworth, New-Hampshire. July 11, 1743
Little is known of how the family headed by the tall, patriarchal schoolmaster John Sullivan and his beautiful, vain, hot tempered wife got on in the pinched, gossipy atmosphere of a small New England town but it is clear that Sullivan, like Joseph Kennedy, supplemented whatever national ambitions his sons may have held with the basic skills necessary to cut figures in the military and political world at large. But if we consider some of his ex-patriot contemporaries John William with the Pretender Charles Stuart or Thomas, or Owen Roe, or xxx, a certain pattern emerges: linguists by tradition and necessity, did acts of a priestly cast, they left skulking about their native lands to make their fortunes in the world. Penniless outsiders, their service could be as well described as talk and bluff as by the usual praise of honest service as tutors, masters, keepers of difficult young boys and girls. True, as often as not they might be prey to certain hazards of that role, leaving town hastily followed by the threats of some family.
The dangers of the Irish schoolmaster were labor to be proclaimed by English writers including Thackery, Meredity, and Frocede. In advancing the boys' careers, Master John's change of name and religion doubtless proved advantageous -- his freedom was said to have been bought by a local clergyman. In Puritan New England where, according to historian David Doyle, "papery, Irishmen, continental monarchies, Frenchmen, Spaniards, and servility were all linked in a grand arc of witchcraft threatening the fail light of liberty and pure religion."
Master John's change of name and religion were doubtless prudent steps toward acceptance. Whether the family ever achieved genuine acceptance whatever that may have meant in those functions times, in the town is another matter --
Master John's inclination toward idleness, peripatetic scholarly interests, his noticeable arguments with his wife -- once when John was three his father refused to come home from Boston until his mother apologized for her "rash and unadvised Speech and Behavior." The tall, patriarchal schoolmaster may have changed his name from the Gaelic Owen to the English John, from the Irish O'Sullivan to the vaguely continental Sulevan, his religion from Catholicism to Anglicism, have let it be known that his redemption had been purchased by a protestant clergyman; but just how effective these disguises may have been in offsetting certain suspicious signs -- a facility in Latin, eccentric and purposeless scholarly curiosity, and a domestic life that featured fiery outbursts of temper from his beautiful Cork-born wife and occasional disappearances to Boston by the Master himself. For none of this behavior would pass unnoticed in a village where Puritan suspicions and horror of idleness prevailed, and it is of credit to Master Sullivan that he managed to find an important role for his character and moreover provide, in that forlorn little mill town, intellectual and sustenance to his spirited sons that would launch them into international prominence.
Exactly how Master Sullivan, the loquacious schoolmaster, fond of big words and ideas, spouting fancy phrases, tinged with a vague irreverence related to his neighbors we can only speculate. But we may presume that the elder Sullivan, arriving at Berwich with his child wife whom he had, they said, paid for in xx, may have been viewed as a barbarian and a scholar, a wild Irishman, and though he might fashion himself the intellectual of the icy little village of Durham, was he not at heart a barbarian, and when in the frosty nights of November the good townsmen heard his spoiled sons, John and James and Benjamin, stumbling through the town, shouting and hooting, with their swaggering Latinisms, it was, they dimly perceived, as if those same Gaelic chieftains had risen from their graves once again to curse the lives and marry the daughters of civil men.
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Daniel Sullivan, Irish counter-tenor, sings "God Save the King" in Bath, England. According to David Garrick he is looking "gay and sensible" as usual, though Mrs. Delaney calls him "a block with a very fine voice" who puts Handel "mightily out of humor". Back in his home town of Dublin Sullivan leases the Crow Street Music Hall for a concert serties but quarrels with his partners Storace and Lee, with the result that the lease is cancelled and the hall occupied by an anatomical waxworks.
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20 June In the name of God Amen. The Twentieth Day of June in the Year of Oure Lord God one Thousand Seven Hundrd fifty and one. I, Darmod O Sullivane Mcffinin duff of Dirrenavirrig in the County of Kerry gent, being sick and weake in Boddy but of good and perfect Memory thanks to Almighty God etc. ..
. I doe will, order, and bequeath, unto My grandaughter Nanney O Sulliv[an] the Number of Cattle hereafter Mentiond viz thirtey incalfe cowes and strapers; Ten Shanafighs; thirty carteases Irish gearransm and yearlings; Eight Mares and garrens; as her part and proportion proveded She Marries with the Consent of her parents and friends else to be allowed and paid her and English Shilling onely.
---Last Will and Testament of Dermot Mac Finin Duibh O'Sullivan
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Sixteen year old Redmond Barry (alias Barry Lyndon), anti-hero of Thackery's mid nineteenth century novel, is sneeringly accused of being "only a boy" by his coquettish neighbor, Nora. Barry protests the slight on his manhood by reciting a list of past triumphs including a feisty victory over the local strongman: "Didn't I beat Tom Sullivan, that great hulking brute -- who is nineteen?"
Here, as in other 19th century fiction and drama such as the stories of Somerville-Ross, the native Irish are portrayed as roustabouts or servants of low and crafty character; at such a time a Sullivan would be known to the reader as Munster native Irishman of pure "Celtic" blood. In contrast, Barry Lyndon, the anglo-Irish gentry who goes on to talk and steal his way to Dublin and the capitals of Europe, is taken to be the model of the Anglo-Irishman who has made the great fall so lamented by the Elizabethans like Edmund Spenser ("become more Irish than the Irish themselves.")
(Barry Lyndon's character is in fact modeled after the raffish 18th century Irish fortune seeker Jesse Foot, who ended his days in King's Bench Prison a few years before Thackery started his novel.)
Another Sullivan appears in the novel a few pages on, and again exemplifies what one would expect of a crafty peasant: young Redmond, off to make his fortune in Dublin, comes upon a what he fancies to be a lady in distress, her carriage surrounded by cackling, peasants indifferent toward, even amused by her troubles;( this is a scene not uncommon in the west of Ireland, Thackery assures the reader in a footnote to the original magazine serialization of the novel; indeed Thackery tells us that in Ireland the peasants still "look on at murders.")
"What is this noise, fellows?" said I [i.e. Barry Lyndon], riding up amongst them, and, seeing a lady in a carriage very pale and frightened, gave a slash of my whip, and bade the red-shanked ruffians be off. "What has happened, madam, to annoy your ladyship?" said I, pulling off my hat, and pulling my mare up at a prance at the carriage window. The lady explained. She was the wife of Captain Fitzsimmons, and was hastening to join the Captain at Dublin. Her chair had been stopped by a highwayman; the great oaf of a servingman had fallen down on his knees armed as he was; and though there were thirty people in the next field working when the ruffian attacked her, not one of them would help her, but, on the contrary, wished the captain, as they called the man, good luck. Alas for poor naive Redmond, Lady Fitzsimmons and her scurrilous husband, will prove to be no more than fast-talking owners of a sleazy Dublin rooming house. But for the romantic present the reader, whatever his degree of skepticism, will soon hear, along with the naive young Redmond, who is paying for dinner, Mrs. Fitzsimmons tale of the unfortunate events of the day, of the hundreds of guineas, jewels, snuff boxes, and watches she has lost to the robber, who is none other that the infamous Captain Freeny, that eighteenth century highwayman and storyteller whose memoirs Thackery had discovered one rainy night in Galway in 1842, as described in his "Irish Sketch Book." Young Redmond who joins Mrs. FitzSimmons for a fine dinner--which he pays for-- criticizes himself for arriving too late to stop the highwayman form carrying off her money and pearls; her response is interrupted by her rude servant:
"and sure, ma'am, them wasn't much," said Sullivan, the blundering servant, who had been so frightened at Freeny's approach, and was waiting on us at dinner. "Didn't he return you the thirteenpence in copper, and the watch, saying it was only pinchbeck?" But his lady rebuked him for a saucy varlet, and turned him out of the room at once, saying to me when he had gone, "that the fool didn't know what was the meaning of a hundred-pound bill, which was in the pocket-book that Freeny took from her."
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May 10
Then called the executioner and he {Sullivan} said, "Don't pull the rope too tight, it is hard for a man to die in cool blood!" After which he cried out: "O good GOD! O good GOD! have mercy on my soul!"
Then said he the Lord's Prayer. Just as he was turned off the cart, he cry'd "LORD have mercy on my soul!"
--Description of the execution of Owen Sullivan, said to be of County Wexford, on his execution on May 10, 1756, for counterfeiting currency in New York. The name Owen Sullivan was said to be an alias, so this is not a Sullivan afer all. But interesting nonetheless that such a man would choose to call himself a Sullivan.
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Death in Castletown Bearhaven, by military ambush, of Morty Sullivan, after O'Sullivan murders a prominent Anglo-Irish settler, Puxley, whom Sullivan believes is informing on his local campaign to recruit for the France's Irish brigade. (Subsequent history of the Puxleys is the subject of Daphne du Maurier's novel "Hungry Hill".) O'Sullivan's body is dragged by boat from Bearhaven to Cork, and his head, once said to have been the handsomest in the French Army that defeated the English at Fontenoy, was displayed rotting on a spike for several years, at the county jail at Cork.
O'Sullivan's character was recreated in the late nineteenth century novel by British historian A.M. Froude, who portrays Sullivan and the remnants of his clan as semi-barbaric remnants of the old feudal order, brooding, reckless, mercurial adventurers who refuse to yield to the beneficial influence of the new chiefs of Dunboy, those god-fearing, Calvinist, British landlords who have come to Dunboy to spread new ideas of industry and commerce.Froude's novel,
"Two Chiefs of Dunboy", revolves around the rivalry between Colonel Gerdes, the new English chief of Dunboy, whose service for the King in Scotland during the Jacobean revolt of 1745 has been rewarded by a grant of land in western Ireland. There, Gerdes has established the beginning of a fishing, agriculture, and most promising, a mining enterprise, raising capital for the enterprise by selling his slave holdings in the West Indies. Tenants of this progressive and kindly settler are portrayed as moody, sometimes lovable folk prone to distrustful bouts especially when piqued by the nervous ambitions of their self-proclaimed "chiefs" like Sullivan and his trouble-making relatives who continue to skulk around their native lands.
However great a civil threat Morty Oge O'Sullivan may have been perceived by the British, he was popular with the local people in the wild area where he lived; his nurse, on seeing his head forlornly displayed on a post at the Cork jail, is said to have penned a heartbroken Gaelic poem that ends with:
High spik'd on their jail!
That cheek, in the summer sun,
Ne'er shall grow warm;
Nor that eye e'er catch light,
But the flash of the storm!
O'Sullivan's son Murty carried on the tradition; he was killed at age 23 in a duel with his uncle Mark.
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Letter from John O'Sullivan at age 60, hoping to induce his old friend James Edgar to put in a good word to the aging Stuart Pretender:
Sir, I profit with the greatest pleasure of the occasion of the New Year to renew me in your memory and assure you a few men liveing wishes you more sincerely all measure of satisfaction and happiness. I wrote to me Lord Alford, to pray him on this occasion to lay me most dutifully at His Majestie's feet and beg the favour of you to d the same. I depend to much upon your friendship for me not to expect yt upon all occasions, you'll pay my Court. Assure His Majesty of my Duty and Zelle for his service, but with all the misfortunes I meet with, nothing gives me more concern than to see yt nothing appears favorably for yt end. The Almighty comfort us and preserve the King and Royal family. I am here alone a month and intend to stay till the New Year, but am afraid all to no purpose, for without protection one can expect no success here. It cant be helpt, we must take patience and expect better times. Once more my good wishes will alwaise attend you and beg you would be persuaded yt I am most sincerely,
Sir, Your most humble and most obedient servant, Le Chevr. O'Sullivan."
We lose track of John O'Sullivan after this letter, written when the aging exile was age 60. There are indications that his wife died, that he returned to his old role of tutor, perhaps after taking holy orders. Like Donal O'Sullivan Beare, John O'Sullivan had spent, one might say wasted, much of his manhood trying to revitalize and then increasingly recreate the symbols of the old order. But whereas Donal was able the intervening century had drained the resources and hopes of Catholic, Mediterranean Europe which left O'Sullivan spending his sixth decade in pursuit of a doomed and unprofitable cause.
We are in middle age no doubt powerfully attracted to relive recreation of the past, and perhaps that is our best and most creative function; but in contemplating John O'Sullivan's fifties we are forced to think of the style of this pursuit, where the high romance of Don Quixote decays to foolish and undignified pursuit of lost causes and unworthy clients.
For my own part I like to think that O'Sullivan did in fact in the end recognize the futility of the Stuart cause, spending the last of his days tonsure, contemplative, thoughtful, sitting in this summer garden, grey stone wall, commenting on the writings of a ten year old child, perhaps his own. O'Sullivan's son, Thomas Hubert Sullivan, was evidently inspired enough by his father's example to join pirate John Paul Jones in a similar role to his father's relation with Charles. However, Jones and the younger Sullivan quarrelled in 1779, and Sullivan fought with the British General Clinton in America. Leaving America in 1883, he fought with the Dutch, died in 1824
Mr. O'Sullivan (1700?-1761?) who was Marechal Maillebois's (1682-1762) aid du camp in Corsica (1739).
"The Prince was never easy but when this agreeable Irishman
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Few Sullivans appear in Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland. The first, Daniel, is to be found on page 285 of volume 4 under the entry for ORPEN OF GLANEROUGH: Richard Orpen acquired very considerable property, and from his activit and determined courage, appears to have taken the lead amongst the protestant settlers in that part of Kerry. In 1688 [during the Irish rebellions of the late 18th century] Mr. Orpen garrisoned his house at Killowen, and received into it all the neighboring Protestant families; but Captain Phelim McCarthy, with three thousand Irish soldiers, appearing before the garrison, took it. Having surrender ed under terms that were later "shamefully violated" by the Irish, Orp went to England, became a Captain in the army of King William, and participated in the victory over the Irish at the battle of the Boyne, which again subdued the natives.
Orpen's grandson, Arthur, who m. a French lady, and brought her to reside for some time at Killowen. Disliking however the country, and wishing to return to France, Mr. Orpen and his wife put all their property on board a small vessel belonging to him, and sailed from Kenmare. A storm however overtook them off the Hogg Island, and the vessel went ashore, when the only chance of escape was to venture in the boat; but Mrs. Orpen refusing to do so her husband would not leave her, and they both perished. It is related that, while the crew were departing from the wrecked vessel Mr. Orpen said to one of them, named Daniel Sullivan, "Will YOU desert me too?" The faithful servant returned to the ship and perished with his master and mistress. His widow was allowed a pension for life by the Orpens.
III. Thomas, died Trinity College, Dublin. This gentleman was on board when the melancholy accident befell his brother Arthur, but escaped in the boat, and landed with the sailors at Derrinane..
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On December 21, 1775 General John Sullivan, having encamped in Cambridge at Winter Hill, waits his fate in the planned attack agianst the British batteries occupying Bunker Hill. Old Borwas and Jack Frost are now at work building a bridge over the Charles River, which when complete will be the access to Charlestown which Sullivan is determined to retake, or perish in the attempt; Sullivan would have learned this river crossing trick from his father, Master John Sullivan of Berwick, a scholarly Irishman who would have been familiar with Anteneas' history, in which the Romans were much impressed with the Gaulish military strategy of crossing frozen river, a matter about which they natually knew little. Sullivan writes to John Adams, urging him to exhort the those timid slaves in Washington to abandon their moderation. He adds that when an opportunity to fight presented itself if I should not have courage myself, I should do all in my power to encourage others to join the fight. These kind of comments did not win Sullivan friends in Congress.
Benjamin Rush, who hated Sullivan, claimed that John Adams hoped that Sullivan would be among the first to get a ball through his head. But Abigail Adams,visiting Sullivan at his post in Cambridge that December, reported to her husband that Sullivan had a "warm constitution", that he was "when once roused not very easily lulled," but otherwise easy, social, and popular with the men.
Meanwhile Sullivan was growing impatient with the pace of the war and the slow freezing of the Charles. On December 29 he tried to mount a suprise attack by walking across the frozen river at night but the ice began to crack, or, some say, a musket discharged accidentally, and his 300 man force had to retreat.
Sullivan raged and fumed, quarrelled about provisions and money, gave urgent orders and advice; writing to one officer in New York he noted Your men are frequently to be cautioned against offering any insult or abuse to the Indians, as one act of rudeness in a soldier might involve America in a dangerous war with a savage enemy. But Sullivan never got another chance to retake Bunker Hill. When he stormed the hill in March he found, fortress defended by lifeless straw sentries. General Howe had slipped out of Sullivan's grasp, retreated from Boston. According to his biographer Charles Whittemore Sullivan was brave to the extent of folly, ambitious,desirous of popularity, but inclined to be arrogant and unduly sensitive.
In fact the details of the battle of Bunker Hill have been controversial. In 1825 William Sullivan took the deposition of some forty Americans who claimed to have been survivors of that famous event. Critics disdained the attempt to revive the reputation of the Irish-American general, who was widely disdained among American historians. The effort to document Sullivans role at Bunker Hill was described as a tale that "drew more on the imagination than was fit for historical evidence."
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Master John Sullivan, now in his eighties, borrows a French grammar dictionary, and some French books from his son, General John, lately returned from Quebec, where he conducted an unsuccessful assault on the British. The retired schoolmaster claims that French may be useful to him some day. A few months later he writes an essay, in passable French, to his son.
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Eben Sullivan, youngest son of Master John of Berwick, Maine, is held as a hostage by Indians for the fulfillment of a treaty. One evening Sullivan, having been dealt with in an insulting manner by some young Indians, throws a ladle of boiling soup in the face of his captors. Sullivan is saved from the angry braves only by intervention of his fellow prisoners.
Eben was a lawyer like his brothers John and James. Like the rest of his family and descendants he considered himself an assimilated American, marrying Abigail Cotton in 1772. Eben went on to be a major in the Army during the revolutionary wars and, once again captured by the Indians,was required to live a wandering life with the tribe under difficult circumstances, witnessing on one occasion the building of a large fire on which he was scheduled to be burned to death. He escaped captivity during a drunken celebration by jumping into a river, drowning a savage dog whose barking threatened to expose him. In his later life Sullivan maintained a law practice in Berwick, Maine. According to Eben's great nephew, Judge John Sullivan of Exeter, NY, writing in the 1850s, "Dangers had no terrors" for Eben. "He was a man of pleasure, gay, hospitable, generous to a fault." An elderly lady remembered him as "very mild gentlemanly man, one of the kindest and most indulgent men she ever knew. She never saw him excited but once, and then his voice and manner were terrific."
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After some hard times Washington had met his first military successes at Trenton and Princeton, the previous winter of 1776. General John Sullivan from New Hampshire had been with Washington and had fought well and hard at these triumphant moments.
True, Sullivan's military career had not gone uncriticized. Retreats rarely draw glory, and Sullivan's leadership of the agonizing American retreat from Canada in the summer of 1776, if conducted with bravery and toughness, was a retreat nonetheless. More seriously, Sullivan's forces had been soundly defeated at Long Island in August of 1776, and Sullivan had been captured.
Prior to his exchange and resumption of command under Washington, he had conveyed peace offers from Lord Howe to Congress, which had led to suspicions about his loyalties among some radicals and among others who didn't like him.
Like many men George Washington wisely sought association with others who balanced his own qualities. At his worst Washington could be dour and overcautious and perhaps on that basis found the presence of the vain, mercurial, and sometimes reckless General John Sullivan of New Hampshire a contrast. But there were limits, and when in early March 1777 after passing on various promotions of his senior commanders Washington received a testy letter from Sullivan saying that "thought I never wish to complain I can't help the Disagreeable feeling So common to mankind when they find themselves slighted and Neglected" and begging Washington to tell him his faults so that he might quit the army and "Rid the Continent of an officer who is unworthy to Trust with command." Washington was annoyed. Sullivan's letter was whining in tone. It amounted to blackmail. Washington's reply is perhaps one of history's most memorable, stern and paternal reprimands:
Morristown 15, March, 1777.
"Do not, my dear General Sullivan, torment yourself any longer with imaginary slights, and involve others in the perplexities you feel on that score. No other officer of rank in the whole army has so often conceived himself neglected, slighted, and ill treated as you have done, and none I am sure has had less cause than yourself to entertain such ideas. Mere accidents, things which have occurred in the common course of service, have been considered by you as designed affronts. But pray, Sir, in what respect did General Greene's late command at Fort Lee differ from his present command at Baskenridge, or from yours at Chatham? And what kind of separate command had General Putnam at New York? I never heard of any except his commanding there ten days before my arrival from Boston, and one day after I had left it for Haerlem Heights, as senior officer. In like manner at Philadelphia, how did his command there differ from the one he has at Princeton, and wherein does either vary from yours at Chatham? Are thee any peculiar emoluments or honors to be reaped in the one case and not in the other? No. Why, then, these unreasonable, these unjustifiable suspicions? Suspicions which can answer no other end than to poison your own happiness and add vexation to that of others. General Health, it is true, was ordered to Peekskill, so was General Spencer, by the mere chapter of accidents (being almost in the country), to Providence, to watch the motions of the fleet then hovering in the Sound. What followed after to either or both was more the effect of chance than design.
Your ideas and mine respecting separate commands have but little analogy. I know of but one separate command, properly so called, and that is in the Northern Department, and General Sullivan, General St. Clair, or any other general officer at Ticonderoga will be considered in no other light, whilst there is a superior officer in the department, than if they were placed at Chatham, Baskenridge, or Princeton. But I have not time to dwell upon subjects of this kind. In quitting it I shall do it with an earnest exhortation that you will not suffer yourself to be teased with evils that only exist in the imagination, and with slights that have no existence at all, keeping in mind, at the same time, that if distant armies are to be formed there are several gentlemen before you in point of rank who have a right to claim a preference."
Could Washington continue to depend on Sullivan as one of his highest commanders? True, Sullivan had shown initiative; the first battle of the war had been Sullivan's raid on Fort William and Mary near Portsmouth. In Boston in 1776 Sullivan had served well during the siege. Sullivan's dislike of the English was perhaps typical of the Irish and Washington might capitalize on that and did by appointing Sullivan to lead a celebration of Saint Patrick's Day. But then there had been the debacle at Trenton. Congress had been angrily seeking someone to blame for that. Sullivan had been captured and had returned with messages from the British commander Harve. Susceptible to flattery, mercurial in temper, Sullivan's persistence and loyalty could be questioned. So Washington was in a quandary. He might cut Sullivan off, throw him to the dogs. Sullivan was not a brilliant commander; most of his military learning came from reading books. In that sense he was probably replaceable. But on the other hand Sullivan, better at beginnings than endings, overly sensitive, quick to pout and quit and feel sorry for himself when other men might continue with the task. But the man was spirited, and spirit was in short supply with winter. And if Sullivan himself was short in combat experience, he certainly came from a fighting tradition. Washington knew he needed Sullivan.
At the same time it must be said that 1777 had not been an easy year for John Sullivan.. He had been captured at Long Island, seduced by Howe to carrying peace overtures to Congress. Released, he resumed command. The victories at Trenton and Princeton should have gone a long way toward cleaning up any suspicions of his loyalty, competence, and bravery. But in matters of revolutionary war it was not that easy.
Then there had been matters of health. Days in winter camp made Sullivan restless; he thought too much. Sullivan's stomach had been bothering him. There were opportunities to brood. On February 22 John Adams wrote to him complaining that though his constituents were paying for a great army, they were not receiving their money's worth in good news. They didn't even know where the army was. Adams addressed Sullivan: "In truth, my old friend, I wish to hear, more than I do, of the vigilance, activity, enterprise and valor of some of our New England generals." The eighteenth century was well tuned to the subtle insult. Sullivan, a sensitive man, could sense Adams' true attitude toward him. To Benjamin Rush, who hated Washington and his generals, whom he considered a band of drunkards, Adams had the previous fall been more blunt on the subject of Sullivan -- he wished that Sullivan had taken the first bullet at Long Island. Meanwhile there were complaints from various southern gentlemen about the performance of the northern armies. To these, Sullivan responded:
I have always had an aversion to fighting on paper for I have never yet found a man well versed in that kind of fighting that would practice any other. To Sullivan, Southern valor appears to be a composition of boasting and conceit. As for the fighting spirit of Yankees, No men fight better or write worse than the Yankees of which this letter will be good evidence.
Arriving back in New Hampshire on a short leave (3/20) to take care of pressing business at home Sullivan found soldiers, ordered to Ticonderoga by Washington, unequipped with either clothing or arms. His complaints about the condition of arms supplied were answered by accusations that the soldiers and officers were failing to care for what was supplied to them. Meanwhile news from Connecticut that Howe's army, aided by the "neutral gentry" was achieving early successes against the American militia, caused Sullivan to fume against the tory traitors, "ungenerous animals" now "rearing their heads in every part of the continent." Sullivan angrily urged the NH Committee of Safety to rid the country of them..
In early June, (6/2) the British made another attempt to win Sullivan over to the king's cause: "You will be one of the first sacrifices to the resentment and justice of government, your family will be ruined, and you must die with ignominy; or if you should be so happy as to escape, you will drag along a tedious life of poverty, misery, and continual apprehensions in a foreign land," an old Tory friend wrote to him, suggesting that it was not too late for Sullivan to tread back the steps he had already taken and bring New Hampshire back to king and country.
In early June Sullivan received a letter from the gadfly Benjamin Rush complaining that a Major Sullivan under General Sullivan's command had beaten one of Rush's servants, and that Sullivan was clearly delinquent in not effecting proper punishment. The same day he received a letter from his brother Ebenezer, a British prisoner of war, begging that the use his influence to arrange for his redemption.
On the military front it was a harrowing time for Washington's generals. Howe's forces outnumbered their own, and they continually expected an attack. Many days passed when Sullivan expected that the next day would be the one when he would fall in battle -- gloriously he hoped. But Howe's movements were oddly desultory and apparently indecisive. It was an atmosphere of continuing tension, in which slight disputes were liable to be magnified.
Some time in June, Sullivan, Nathaniel Greene, and Henry Knox discovered that a Frenchman, Philippe du Coudray, had been appointed major general by Congress -- a foreigner given a superior position to them, who had been carrying the burnt of the resistance. The three generals wrote an angry and to some, disrespectful, letter to Congress complaining of the appointment. On July 1, Sullivan wrote to Hancock about the rumor of du Coudray's appointment: "If this report be true I shall be under the disagreeable necessity of quitting the service." The next day found him begging Washington's influence to relieve his brother Ebenezer of the "amazing difficulties" attendant on his role as a paroled prisoner of the British.
On July 5 he again threatens to resign in a letter to Washington, explaining that he had been challenged to a duel by a medical officer of lower rank as a result of some argument over medical services. The officer had backed down but Sullivan then came under criticism of his fellow generals for accepting a challenge from an inferior. Sullivan is in a frenzy -- should he accept invitations to duel from everyone? ("I am by no means an enemy to duels; I most sincerely wish that Congress had encouraged instead of prohibiting them.") How should he handle such insults from majors? From sergeants?
On July 7 Congress resolves that the complaint of Sullivan, Greene, and Knox regarding the
Frenchman's appointment constitutes "an invasion of the liberties of the people, and
indicating a want of confidence in the justice of Congress" -- the generals were invited to
either apologize for "so dangerous a tendency" or retire.
Meanwhile he had the day-to-day problems of a restless and half-clothed, barefoot, and
inadequately armed body of troops to deal with -- regular desertions, demands for leave,
incidents of misbehavior or theft of civilian goods by the soldiers, quarrels and discipline
problems among the men, and the constant half-seen shifting of Howe's forces. Two of his men,
Brown and Murphy, having been convicted by court martial for stealing civilian goods while
drunk and ordered by Washington to be executed, Sullivan received a single pardon to be issued
to a man of his choosing at the moment of execution. Sullivan, having at the urging of one of
his officers, chose Murphy as the one to be saved, his pardon to be announced after Brown had
been executed before the assembled troops; only, at the moment the nose was being placed
around Brown's neck, another officer rode up to say that Brown had been an innocent, albeit
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Thursday, September 11, found Sullivan commanding the right wing of Washington's forces. Confused or faulty intelligence resulted in Howe's troops outflanking the Americans, and the collapse of Sullivan's part of the line. Sullivan, unable to rally his men, joined the adjacent division where his horse was shot out from under him and, according to one officer "his uniform bravery, coolness, and intrepidity, both in the heat of battle, rallying and forming the troops when broke from their ranks, appeared to me to be truly consistent with, or rather exceeded, any idea I had ever of the greatest soldier." Others, especially North Carolina's Thomas Burke, accused Sullivan's blundering as being the cause of the loss of the battle. The defeat occurred at a time when Congress was growing impatient with the performance of Washington's army, and sullivan was suspended from the army. For many months afterwards, he found him dealing with depositions and criticism and hearings. From all of these he would be ultimately acquitted.
In early August, Sullivan is overcome with bleeding ulcers and writes to Washington: Hanover August 7th, 1777
Dear General
I Joined my Division Three Days Since but am Exceeding weak & what is Still more afflicting I am Extremely apprehensive that I shall never perfectly Recover Doctr Jones says that my Excessive Fatigue has So much Injured The whole nervous System that nothing but a Long Continuation of the Cold Bath accompanied with a Strict Regimen can Restore me to a perfect State of Health -- all Solid Food & all Drink Except water must be abstained from. Spirits I must never again use but with the greatest Caution (if at all) as he Conceives that the free use of them has in great measure assisted in bringing on my Complaint & if continued will always have the Same Effect. This being the fourth time I have Bled he apprehends That the Bleeding has almost become habitual & will (if not prevented in the above mentioned manner) prove Fatal. I will however do all in my power to perform my Duty in the Division So Long as my new mode of Living will afford me strength sufficient for the purpose -- In August, Sullivan was troubled with insubordination from one of his officers on the one hand, Sullivan's rebuke to the officer was so severe that the officer deserted to the British and complaints from Washington's staff that he wasn't filing proper reports of his troop strength. Meanwhile Sullivan's published remarks vaguely impugned the loyalty of General St. Claire, who had withdrawn his troops from Ticonderoga in July, resulted in a demand from St. Claire for a "clarification" of the strong suggestion that satisfaction would be demanded in the absence of such an explanation -- "it is therefore left to yourself to explain, and that Explanation, whatever it is, I expect you will be good enough to send me by the Bearer. The Gentlemen is one of my Aids de Camp and will wait for it."
The August 22 raid was very much in the Sullivan style -- daring, but energetic, but not successful, with 25 American casualties and over a hundred of the raiders captured. Though Sullivan's troops killed or wounded many of the British troops and Tory sympathizers, troop discipline was poor and many were trapped on the island as a result of confusion over the timing and location of boats meant to carry them back to New Jersey.
Though Washington generally approved of the raid, he consented to Congressional demands that an inquiry into Sullivan's conduct be made, though Washington, needing Sullivan's services in the upcoming confrontation with Howe's army, which was moving toward Philadelphia.
Thursday, September 11, found Sullivan commanding the right wing of Washington's forces. Confused or faulty intelligence resulted in Howe's troops outflanking the Americans, and the collapse of Sullivan's part of the line. Sullivan, unable to rally his men, joined the adjacent division where his horse was shot out from under him and, according to one officer "his uniform bravery, coolness, and intrepidity, both in the heat of battle, rallying and forming the troops when broke from their ranks, appeared to me to be truly consistent with, or rather exceeded, any idea I had ever of the greatest soldier." Others, especially North Carolina's Thomas Burke, accused Sullivan's blundering as being the cause of the loss of the battle. The defeat occurred at a time when Congress was growing impatient with the performance of Washington's army, and sullivan was suspended from the army. For many months afterwards, he found him dealing with depositions and criticism and hearings. From all of these he would be ultimately acquitted.
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Robbery Warrants are issued for Owen and Tuige Sullivan of Dromsullivan, "notorious tories, robbers, and rapparees in arms on their keeping, of the Popish religion."
Provincial records indicate that the following year the two will be captured, rewards of 40 pounds each having been issued for their capture with a 20 pound bonus paid for the head of Owen.
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Sullivans in my own family have been noted for longevity. Evidently this trait is not universal; Master John Sullivan, the eighteenth century New Hampshire schoolmaster who fathered a Revolutionary War general and a governor, once noted that though he himself had lived too long, the rest of his branch of the Sullivan family had long been known for their short life span, few of them surviving much beyond the age of fifty. Curious as to whether this might be a Sullivan trait, I once examined a sample of seventy prominent nineteenth century American Sullivans, comparing their longevity with a comparable sample of Smiths. The distribution of age at death is shown in the graphs.
Evidently Sullivans two generations ago had a mean natural life span of 70 years (sigma=12) slightly exceeding the 67 year mean of their Anglo-AMerican counterparts.
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